


Under Her Skin

by El Staplador (elstaplador)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Community: ladiesbingo, F/F, Lovers to Friends, Rivalry, Stealth Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-22
Updated: 2017-03-22
Packaged: 2018-10-09 05:59:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10405476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elstaplador/pseuds/El%20Staplador
Summary: 'Next time you face her... whenisthe next time you face her?''Rostelecom.''Ah, so you'll have home advantage.' Amélie nodded thoughtfully. 'Well, it might help a little bit. You'll see.''I think I can get under her skin,' Mila said.*Mila tries, repeatedly, to get the edge on Sara.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For the Ladiesbingo prompt 'Silver and Gold'.

_Skate Canada_

The strains of _O Canada_ died away, and the photographers began to clamour for the three of them to shuffle up together. Mila stepped up to the top of the podium and felt the gold medallist sling an arm across her shoulders. 'Congratulations,' she murmured between camera flashes.

'Home advantage,' Amélie Saint-Croix said, in a tone that would have been modest if only she'd meant it. 'You'd have beaten me if it hadn't been for that triple Lutz in the free.'

Mila winced. She'd mostly managed not to think of that triple Lutz in the free. 'I'll get you next time,' she said, for the sake of it.

'Next time? Next time is the Grand Prix Final.' Amélie shook her head. 'Well, maybe you will, but I'll tell you for free that it's silver and bronze for us. Nobody's beating Sara Crispino this year.'

'You can say that, so early in the season?'

'I've been skating against her a long time,' Amélie said with a solemnity that Mila wouldn't find amusing for several years yet. 'Next time you face her... when _is_ the next time you face her?'

'Rostelecom.'

'Ah, so you'll have home advantage.' Amélie nodded thoughtfully. 'Well, it might help a little bit. You'll see.'

'I think I can get under her skin,' Mila said. She felt a prickle of excitement at the thought.

Amélie gave her a very world-weary look. 'Do you mean what I think you mean?'

'What do you think I mean?' Mila retorted. She hadn't meant _that_. Probably.

'Oh, nothing,' Amélie said. 'But I bet you she beats you, every time. If you manage to _get under her skin_ I'll buy you a bottle of champagne.'

'And if I don't, I'll buy you one? You're on,' Mila said, before she could think better of it. She was aware that they hadn't defined their terms; in particular, what they meant by _get under her skin_. That was probably a mistake.

'Well, good luck,' Amélie said, dryly. 'Good luck with all of it.'

  
_Rostelecom Cup_

Everything felt unsettled at Rostelecom. Everything felt different. Sara was different, choosing to sit with Mila and Georgi up in the stands, rather than hanging over the barrier to watch Michele, the way she usually did. There'd been some sort of argument. Sara had told him to stop interfering in her love life. Something like that. She wasn't talking about it, but everyone knew.

Yes, Sara was different, but then everything was different. Victor running off back to Japan. Yakov having to step into his shoes.

'Why has he gone?' Mila asked, and nobody seemed to know, except perhaps Yuri, who was sulking, and presumably Yakov, who wasn't telling.

  
'Show me Moscow!' Sara demanded after the men's short program.

Mila said, 'You want Yuri Plisetsky for that. He grew up here.'

Sara giggled. 'No, I don't. A fifteen-year-old boy: all those hormones! Imagine what my brother would say!'

'I don't think you're his type,' Mila said, though who knew what Yuri's type was, really, or if he even had one?

'Trust me.' Sara screwed her face up in a comical expression of despair. 'It doesn't make any difference.'

  
Mila took Sara around as much of Moscow as she could fit into an hour and a bit. It couldn't hurt to check out the competition. And Amélie was right: Mila had home advantage here, and she'd take any chance she could to make that obvious to Sara.

The language was a good start. Mila made a point of talking to shop assistants and taxi drivers in very fast Russian and on the most flimsy of pretexts. _See_ , she was trying to say to Sara, _how lost you'd be without me here? See how you're at my mercy?_ Sara didn't seem to be getting the message; she was looking around with a quick interest, following Mila with misplaced, unquestioning, trust, as if it hadn't even occurred to her to be ashamed of her helplessness.

Uninspired by the thought of dodging tourists in Red Square and trying to pretend that she wasn't just as dazzled as they were by the golden domes of St Basil's, Mila found a café that was leaning just a little too hard on its claims to provide the authentic Russian tea drinking experience: gleaming samovars, silvery podstakanniks, all of it. That ought to confuse Sara, surely.

Exaggerating to match the surroundings, Mila mixed the tea strong enough to wake the dead and laughed at the face that Sara made when she tasted it. It wasn't to her own liking, either, but she could hardly dilute it now.

'In 2018 I'll take you round Milan and show you how to drink coffee properly,' Sara promised.

It seemed an impossibly long way off. I'll have beaten her by then, Mila told herself, but she wasn't sure she believed it. 'Let's just get through this season first, shall we?'

'Well, of course.' Sara sighed, thinking perhaps of whatever had gone on between her and her brother. 'How are things in your camp?'

Feeling slightly disloyal – after all, Sara's brother was up against her rinkmates, in a straightforward way in the form of Yuri Plisetsky, and in a complicated way in the form of Yuri Katsuki – Mila mentioned that Victor had left in a hurry.

'Poor Victor,' Sara said, her violet eyes soft with sympathy. 'It's dreadful, when an animal you love... Well, let's hope it doesn't come to that.'

'Mm,' Mila said, struck by two simultaneous thoughts. Firstly: Sara was surprisingly soft-hearted, for such a hard-headed competitor. Secondly: _how on earth did she know more about Victor's dog than Mila did herself?_

The first thought seemed like it would be the more useful, but before Mila could decide what to do with it Sara looked at her watch. 'We'd better get back,' she said, leaving her tea undrunk and not looking like she was going to apologise for that.

  
Sara fell on what should have been a routine triple Salchow, and finished the short program a scant couple of hundredths ahead of Mila.

Perhaps, Mila thought, a bubble of exhilaration settling at her diaphragm, it was working.

  
In the men's free skate Michele had been edged out of the Grand Prix Final by the Japanese Yuri, who had then added insult by injury by hugging everyone in sight. Everyone including Michele himself, and, worse, Sara. The ensuing screaming match took place in Italian, but needed no translation. Mila heard the top notes from the other end of the corridor, and the details from their own Yuri.

That'll get under her skin, Mila thought, if nothing else does. It should be enough to unsettle her.

Buoyed up by her own confidence and the adrenaline surging around the rink, Mila skated her _Tangled Up In Blue_ program as well as she'd ever done it. A little over-rotation on the triple flip, a hand down on the double Axel; everything else felt good.

And yet, as soon as Sara stepped onto the ice in her black velvet _Last Time I Saw Paris_ costume, Mila knew. It wasn't. It wasn't enough. Sara was perfect. It was as if the past two days hadn't happened at all, as if Sara had put everything that had unsettled her or upset her in a cupboard and turned the key in the door.

Mila made herself watch all the way to the end.

  
When she checked her phone in the changing room, there was a text from Amélie: _Better luck next time._

Next time, she'd have to do more. Amélie's voice echoed in her mind. _Good luck with all of it._

Michele won't be at the Grand Prix Final, she thought. Then: but if he turns up anyway, it'll be difficult to get Sara on her own.

  
_Grand Prix Final_

But it was easy.

It was easy to get Sara away from her brother. She was very obviously humiliated that he'd turned up at all, which was a good start. Michele had spoken in Italian, but the tone said everything. _Here to protect you._ But he'd looked straight past Mila, glowering at a blameless stranger over her shoulder.

He doesn't see me as a threat, she thought. A second realisation followed hard on the heels of the first, made her catch her breath. _And nor does she._

'Come out with me tonight, Sara?' she suggested experimentally. 'We can get some tapas.'

Sara turned to her with something like relief. 'That's a great idea, Mila! A girls' night out! Just like Moscow! Mickey, you and Emil can go and find the other guys.'

  
It was easy to order a bottle of wine along with dinner, easy to suggest that they go on to a bar afterwards. And, when they'd both drunk just enough, not quite too much, it was easy to stagger accidentally-on-purpose into Sara, to clutch at her wrists, to hold on just long enough for it to seem awkward to let go, and for those lustrous purple eyes to go dark and wide when Mila looked into them.

Not at all like Moscow, Mila thought, quietly satisfied. And the results would be quite different, too.

  
It was easy to get across the hotel lobby and into the lift without attracting attention. Nobody was around except a bored-looking receptionist.

'Your room?' Mila murmured.

Sara shook her head, giggling softly. 'Yours.'

  
It was not so easy to get the door open when Sara had her backed up against it and was kissing her hard, but Mila managed to get the keycard into its slot and jam the handle down with her right elbow just before the next lift discharged its contents into the corridor. The door swung open, and momentum carried them both into the room.

Mila recovered her balance first and, unable to resist the temptation, swept Sara up into her arms like the hero on the cover of a romance novel.

'I heard you'd been practising your lifts,' Sara gasped.

Mila's heart was hammering. 'What else have you heard about me? And who have you heard it from?'

'Wouldn't you like to know?'

Actually, Mila didn't much care. She carried Sara across the room and laid her down on the bed

  
And it was easy – deliciously, intoxicatingly easy – with teeth and fingertips and tongue, to reduce Sara to a shuddering, gasping mess, and to tell herself that this would translate to a corresponding loss of control on the ice.

  
'What about you?' Sara asked when her breath had subsided to its normal pattern.

Mila had to fight down both desire and curiosity to say, 'Oh, _I'm_ all right.'

Sara sat up and trailed a tentative hand down Mila's arm, and Mila had to stop herself gasping. 'It's true, then?' Sara seemed to be barely suppressing a giggle. 'What they say about Yakov?'

Mila knew perfectly well what she was referring to, but she kept her face straight and said, 'I wouldn't know.'

'Eurgh! Not like that! That he won't let you have sex before a competition, I mean!'

'It's not like he can stop us. It's more... we're _strongly advised not to_.'

'How does he tell you?' Sara asked curiously. 'A group lecture? Is there a PowerPoint presentation?'

Mila snorted. 'No, it's one to one. For the women, he makes one of the assistant coaches do it.' She smiled to herself, remembering Natalia's bored recitation of the theory, followed by a list of recommendations of helpful books and websites 'for the off-season'.

'Not Madame Baranovskaya?'

'They weren't speaking to each other when I had to hear it.' In any case, Mila knew, it was rumoured that Lilia was a devotee of the great Simonova's precisely opposite theory: that the release of emotional and physical tension freed the body and mind to perform to its fullest expression on the ice.

'So how does it go?' Sara was, rather pointedly, keeping her hands to herself. It didn't make her any less distracting. 'I want to hear.'

Mila leaned over and kissed her, just because she could. 'I can't tell you. It's a Russian state secret.'

Sara said something in Italian that was probably very scathing.

'It goes: _Don't. Really, don't. If you must, then use a condom. But don't._ '

'Oh,' Sara said. 'That's less interesting than I was hoping. You're leaving all the theory out, right?'

Mila smiled slowly and secretively, more to annoy Sara than because there was anything to hide. 'Maybe.'

Sara pouted. 'What you've told me is nothing I haven't heard from my own coach.'

'Well,' Mila said, 'we don't all have brothers who can enforce the rules for us.'

'If you think,' Sara said defiantly, 'that Mickey stops me doing anything I want to do, then you're wrong.'

'And what do you want to do now?'

Sara laughed low, throatily. 'Whatever you like.'

  
And, looking down at Sara, spread out there beneath her, limbs trembling, a panting, giddy, mess, Mila thought she'd done enough.

  
The next day, she tried as best she could to play it cool. Which, in practice, meant avoiding Sara. Because she wasn't sure what she'd do if they came face to face with each other. All the way through the men's short program, she was aware of Sara's presence up towards the top of the stand, in the spot that tended to be colonised by skaters who weren't immediately due to perform. First Victor and Yuri Katsuki, then Yuri Plisetsky, came in and sat down next to Sara. There's loyalty, Mila thought, knowing that she was being ridiculous. Where else did she expect them to sit?

She spent most of Friday exploring Barcelona with Amélie, who was tactfully not asking how the whole _get under Sara's skin_ project was going. Sara herself was probably hanging around with Michele and Emil. Mila knew herself fortunate in that most of the Russian team was too preoccupied with Victor's love life and Yuri's fangirl problem to wonder how she was spending her evenings.

  
On the ice, Sara was as untouchable as ever. She pulled off her triple Lutz – triple loop combination with an ease that was almost insulting.

Mila tried not to let it get to her, but she couldn't forget the fact that the base value of Sara's short program was higher than Mila's even if Mila skated perfectly.

And Sara had skated perfectly. Mila had been so sure that she wouldn't.

  
Perhaps, Mila thought, Lilia's approach was the right one, after all. Well, there was time to try that, too, and, once she'd had got over a token sulk regarding the fact that Mila hadn't spoken to her in forty-eight hours, Sara seemed only too happy to help.

But Mila didn't beat her in the free skate, either.

  
After that, there didn't seem to be much point in avoiding Sara again, so she sat with her and Mickey and Emil during the men's free skate. But she made a point of cheering particularly enthusiastically for Yuri's new friend Otabek.

  
_Europeans_

They met by chance in the hotel lobby, Sara on Michele's arm, and Mila a little ahead of the rest of the Russian team.

Sara turned to her, eyebrows raised in expectation. 'Oh, Mila. Tonight. Shall we...?'

She had planned to avoid Sara altogether, but, she thought, a direct snub would suit her purposes equally well. 'No,' Mila said. 'Let's not.'

She felt a quick stab of satisfaction at the way Sara's face twisted.

'But we had such a good time in Barcelona! I thought...' Sara said

'You thought wrong,' Mila said, as coldly as she knew how.

Sara flushed. It didn't suit her.

Michele said something to Sara in Italian. Sara responded impatiently, torn, Mila realised, between the desire to make a scene and the reluctance to let Michele know what had happened.

Mila made the choice for her. Raising the pitch of her voice, slowing the pace, she said in English that Michele could not fail to understand, 'I've come to the conclusion that it's a bad idea to sleep with one's competitors. Don't you agree?'

With nothing left to lose, Sara flashed back, 'If you think I care one way or the other whether you want to fuck me, you're very much mistaken!'

' _Sara!_ ' Michele bellowed, and that was that.

It was, Mila thought, quite an experience to watch a Crispino argument at close quarters. She concentrated on trying to understand the Italian to distract herself from the stinging shame and pain that was rising within her. If she thought hard enough about the words, she thought, then perhaps she wouldn't have to think about what they _meant_.

'Mila,' somebody murmured behind her.

She wheeled around. Victor was looking at her with an odd mixture of pity, admiration and disapproval. She didn't like any of it. 'What?' she snapped.

His expression became deliberately, insultingly blank. 'Burnt fingers? I'm surprised Yakov hasn't told you not to go there.'

'Oh, shut up.' She wished he was a decade younger and twenty kilograms lighter. Yuri was much easier to deal with. 'Yakov doesn't know. Anyway, it's not like that.'

  
It wasn't like that.

Was it?

  
Not wishing to be left alone to think about it, Mila spent the evening in the hotel bar, listening to Anya's blow-by-blow account of her last date with Vassily, and hiding their drinks whenever Yakov passed through.

Michele and Sara came in very late. Sara glanced across the bar and saw her, and Mila caught the tail end of a look that was as soft and as poisonous as lead.

  
It didn't make any difference, of course. Mila was a wreck, her triples evaporating, her steps ragged. Sara was the still point at the centre of a whirl of chaos. Her jumps were immaculate, her spins so secure that Mila was reminded of a gyroscope, impossible to unbalance however hard you prodded or shook it.

  
Sara took gold again.

Mila was out of the medals. Out of the top five. She made the top ten by the skin of her teeth.

  
'I'm sorry, Yakov,' she muttered. She was muttering so that the microphones didn't pick her up, and holding a teddy bear in front of her mouth in case anyone was trying to lipread.

Yakov had no such qualms. 'Mila,' he bellowed, 'that was disgraceful! Sloppy! What were you _thinking_?'

'I know,' Mila said miserably. 'I know. _If only I'd spent less time throwing my rinkmates around then maybe I'd beat Sara Crispino..._ You don't need to tell me.'

'Hm,' Yakov said. 'Hm. So that's it. Stop it. So long as you're thinking about Sara Crispino, you won't beat Sara Crispino.'

*

Amélie sent Mila a text in which she commiserated a lot and only gloated a little bit.

Mila sent one back wishing her luck at the Four Continents. Then, having thought about it for a little while, another one. _Champagne is on me._

Amélie replied: _No, I'll get it. Full marks for effort._

Lilia gave her a lecture on _behaving with dignity, at least in public, and respecting one's competitors_ , that would make Mila's ears turn pink every time she remembered it for the rest of her life. She insisted on Mila's emailing Sara to apologise. Mila grumbled about this to Lilia's face, but she was secretly glad of having a face-saving way to do something she knew she had to do anyway.

Sara emailed back a day later (long enough, Mila thought, for her own coach to have checked the draft thoroughly) expressing in polite, colourless terms her desire to forget all about it and her hope that they would meet at Worlds.

*

_Worlds_

It took her a month to manage it, but Mila stopped thinking about Sara. She thought about her own quad Salchow instead, thought about it, practised it, did it over and over again until it was solid, and dropped it into her free skate as casually as if she wasn't making history.

  
In the end, it turned out that the only way to beat Sara Crispino was on the ice, and Mila was glad of that. The weight of the gold medal around her neck felt like a gift, not a burden. It could have been different.

Sara looked up at her, smiling. 'Congratulations, Mila. You deserved that.' And it wasn't the chilly, invulnerable queen of the ice. It wasn't the hurt, furious champion of Stockholm. This was a Sara she'd never seen before, and Mila liked her.

'Thanks,' she said, and meant it. She gulped. Then she ventured, 'Look, do you want to go out tonight? Not like at Barcelona. Just for, you know, fun.'

Sara looked delighted. 'I'd like that. You can tell me all the Russian... _state secrets_. Now that you're not trying to use them on me.'

Feeling both mortified and immeasurably lighter, Mila grinned and turned slightly to look down at the bronze medallist. 'Do you want to come, Amélie? I owe you a drink, after all.'

'Oh, no,' said Amélie Saint-Croix. 'I'm buying this round.'

**Author's Note:**

> I did a commentary [here](http://el-staplador.dreamwidth.org/467377.html), if you're interested.


End file.
